TV broadcasting cheapens just about everything. Rather than a broadcast, make a live feed available only locally to however many want to come to the location. If people have to stand outside the prison lawn, fine. Erect portable screens and have state troopers available to keep things quiet. If you want to watch, you should be able to watch, but that doesn't mean sitting on your couch with a bowl of popcorn.

The dignity of the victims was casually tossed away by the condemned, so I don't see that they should be afforded any more. Besides, is it dignified to remain in our prison system for the rest of one's life? Hardly. Is it dignified for the rest of us to subsidize that existence? Hardly.

How about: "Yes, because it might turn more people in favor of the death penalty?" Throughout history, executions were very popular as entertainment.

If executions are public, would they be considered a "public forum" with full 1st Amendment protections? Would one side try to whip up the crowd recounting the crimes, with images (real or recreated) of the murdered victims? What would the other side do?

ALL humans have dignity…just because John Wayne Gacey or Saddam Hussein tossed their victim’s dignity away means we ought do the same.

I’d put them on C-SPAN (federal) or State Educational Television (state), live. I’m one of the one’s hoping it raises OPPOSITION to the Death Penalty. At least it shows folks what it looks like, and it MIGHT deter some idiot from acting foolishly.

I know all the ghouls would watch…and the groupies, but that’s not a reason to NOT publicize the State’s Murder/Punishment (depending on your stance).

I'm with AllenS. If you showed one late term abortion the practice would be outlawed in weeks, SCOTUS or no. Speaking for myself, I suspect that C-SPAN executions would lead to the abolition of the death penalty, even by lethal injection. As I think Will Muny (Clint Eastwood) said in "Forgiven", "It's a hell of a thing to kill a man."

Isn't that poll missing the most obvious option: "No, because it will increase support for the death penalty"? It's not for nothing that executions and bloodsport were the popular entertainment of so many ages.

Yes... but because of human dignity. We owe it to the accused to give our attention, our acknowledgement. We shouldn't have the execution of a fellow human being be hidden, out of sight. It's bad enough we do that to spare our gentle sensibilities about the realities of our steak.

In a democratic republic, we are the ones doing the killing, after all.

Here's the central irony in the present day Death Penalty debate. People who want to outlaw the death penalty in all cases are the ones most eager to have someone executed who is found to be innoncent of the crime.

Irony #2: if they succeed in their quest to outlaw the death penalty soon after they will manufacture a hue and cry telling us that life without parole is just as evil as the death penalty.

Executions used to BE public, and that's what people used to watch because there was no TV. There were food vendors and clowns and jugglers and probably bear-baiting and cockfighting too if you were lucky.

Samuel Pepys, 1660: To my Lord’s in the morning, where I met with Captain Cuttance, but my Lord not being up I went out to Charing Cross, to see Major- general Harrison hanged, drawn, and quartered; which was done there, he looking as cheerful as any man could do in that condition. He was presently cut down, and his head and heart shown to the people, at which there was great shouts of joy.

When my grandfather was a boy, people brought their kids to lynchings. And sent postcards of them to each other.

The deterrent aspect of the pro public execution argument is so obvious that I have to wonder why it was omitted as a response. My first thought is that the lawprof is conducting an experiment to see how quickly or how often readers make the argument.

It's interesting that 2 of the first 3 responses in this thread make the deterrent argument. Then people quickly moved on to discussing other stuff, perhaps in part because the deterrent argument had already been made.

I think T-Man has it right. The reason we do not make executions public is that if the public saw how mild lethal injection was, there would be even less opposition to the death penalty than there is today.

The worst thing for the anti-death penalty movement would be to make these public. The anti-death penalty crowd wants to create an image that these executions are horrible brutal and barbaric events. Watching a person drift off into sleep/coma/death would lay the lie to that narrative.

Heck, the public would probably demand a return to hanging and the electric chair.

"Freddy Hill said...I think that there should be 12 buttons Each one of these should be operated by a member of the jury. When the 12 buttons are pressed simultaneously, the accused dies."==================I don't have any great faith in the "wisdom" of 12 jurors. Or unanimous requirements. Just because the jury system is enshrined in the old Constitution does not make it sacred and perfect...Anymore than liftime appointments of lawyers who are politically active money-raisers and academics to be Federal judges.

The public should have the right to see how much tax dollars are saved from jailing a monster for life.

This. I don't see capital punishment as a deterrent to crime. I see it as society no longer having to deal with the convicted and condemned. Besides, life in prison personally freaks me out more than a death sentence would.

Yep, pay per view is the best idea. That way we can recover some of the costs people always complain about with the death penalty.

I also think they should sell safari trips that people could take off the coast of Somalia. There is no reason to worry about pirates or pay for security when people would pay to get the chance to bag a pirate.

Surgeries are broadcast all of the time and have been for a while. I vividly recall the first heart surgery I came across on TV. I didn't watch after the put the rib spreaders in and started to crank them open.

If televising an execution is an offense to human dignity, then how can the act itself not be?

I voted for #3. Incidentally, Minnesota does not have the death penalty because of public revulsion at a botched hanging in Ramsey County. And that was in the 1800s, before television and the Internet. Perhaps society's appetite for death porn has increased a bit since then.

So absolutely yes, televise executions. Let's adopt the Iranian execution ethos. The America of the new millennium can stomach it.

Scott M - " Besides, life in prison personally freaks me out more than a death sentence would."

It is an argument that anti-death penalty people make - that life imprisonment is far, far worse than an "easy death".

In reality, though, you see cons already familiar with the prison system who are facing death penalty charges take a plea to get life without parole to avoid the death penalty. And once in, on death row, the normal butcher and his ACLU lawyers fight like dogs to avoid the death sentence being carried out and shoot for life-no-parole in their court pleas.

Humans are funny that way. People not in the same spot pronounce how they "couldn't imagine living an unendurable life" as a con in jail for life, as a woman of virtue made a 8X a day whore by Mexican cartels, a person with half their limbs blown off - but people in such positions adjust.

Only those who know they will get worse each day, or think they know...are in the ranks of the "logical embrace of death". Several afflictions, led by metastatic cancer, fit that bill. That, and the general majority opinion it is better to die than last a decade as a vegetable like a Terri Schiavo or a person lost to Alzheimers.

Sometimes, life without parole has it's Richard Specks. Who long after the Supreme Court of lawyers reversed his death penalty...did a 1988 video 1st shown in 1996, 5 years after he died of a cocaine-contributed heart attack. The video showed the explicit scenes of lifers engaging in sex, drug use, and money being passed around by prisoners, who seemingly had no fear of being caught. In the center of it all was Speck, performing oral sex on several inmates, sharing a huge pile of cocaine with an inmate, parading in silk panties, sporting female-like breasts (allegedly grown using smuggled hormone treatments). He claimed "If they only knew how much fun I was having, they'd turn me loose. This isn't a bad life at all - especially if you realize sex with men is really hot."

From behind the camera, a prisoner asked Speck why he killed the nurses. Speck shrugged and jokingly said "It just wasn't their night."

I recall back in the early 90's reading a TV executive's comment to the effect that "If it were up to them, the networks would televise live executions. Except Fox [the network of The Simpsons, Married with Children, etc., not FNC]. They would televise live naked executions."

I used to be strongly is favor of the death penalty. Then I got to know some of the prosecutors and have seen trials where the guilt was clearly manufactured. So now I am not so sure.

Besides, the process does not work if it takes about 10 years to execute someone.

What would be better would be a rapid, simple trial. No use of circumstantial evidence. Have the verdict immediately reviewed by a panel of 3 judges and then pull the switch. Turn over time less than 60 days. That is the only thing that would act as a lesson.